Better training helps police when 911 involves mental health
BY MARY SANCHEZTHE KANSAS CITY STAR
08/26/2014 6:00 PM
Jim Dougherty holds a photo of his son, Aaron
Dougherty, who was killed Nov. 11, 2002, during an encounter with Kansas City
police at the Dougherty home. FILE PHOTO BY TAMMY LJUNGBLAD/THE KANSAS CITY
STAR
The weather was beautiful the day police shot and killed Aaron Dougherty.
A bright, sunny
November day of 2002. That’s not trivial reflection. The conditions may have
played a role in the 26-year-old’s death.
Dougherty had
dimmed the lighting in his family’s Brookside home. When officers entered,
answering a 911 call Aaron had made about someone being armed, their eyes were
likely still adjusting. Dougherty, suffering from depression, had knives in his
grip. The officers believed he moved toward them.
Attention to the
innate, physiological aspects of policing, coupled with intense training on
mental illness, is one of the positive outcomes of the shooting. Dougherty’s
father tells his story to police learning about mental health through
Mid-America Crisis Intervention Teams, which has trained 2,000 police officers,
dispatchers and detention officers on the Missouri side of the Kansas City area
since 2000.
The program
reinforces officers’ training about the things that happen to them during
stress — elevated heart rates, for one — then layers on information about
mental illness.
So when Jim
Dougherty heard about the shooting death of Joseph Jennings of Ottawa, Kan.,
his own heart took a skip. Jennings, 18, had reportedly just been released from
psychiatric care and was suicidal. Ottawa police shot him Saturday, answering a
call about a man armed with a gun.
Perspective is
important with increased publicity around police shootings lately. For the
mentally ill, much has been done in recent years to help police respond. The
program Dougherty promotes gives police critical insights, including
understanding how a person might behave if they have stopped taking medication
or are in the middle of an overdose.
Kansas City police
responded to two suicide threats last weekend. A woman armed with a knife said
she wanted “suicide by cop.” A man holding what turned out to be a BB gun sat
on his roof with a rope around his neck. Both situations ended without harm.
Nikk Thompson first
brought the crisis intervention training (CIT) program to the metro area while
he was an officer in Lee’s Summit. He is retired now, but he continues to help
spread it metrowide and to other states, including Kansas.
“If a CIT officer
has to shoot, then he has tried everything in his power not to do so,” Thompson
said. “And it’s devastating to the CIT officers. You feel that you lost.”
To reach Mary
Sanchez, call 816-234-4752 or
send email to msanchez@kcstar.com.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/mary-sanchez/article1304708.html#storylink=cpy
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